Club Run and Cafe Run report - 4th December 2016

33 gathered on this fine morning at the Market Square and plenty of winter kit was on display as the all the outer extremities were covered to keep out the cold. A few were even debating taking an early turn for home as they felt under-dressed for the conditions, however the sun kept shining on the groups and as far as we know no one relented and turned for home.

Whilst I'm not going to turn this into an Oscar winning speech I would like to thank all those who were involved in ensuring our first Reliability Ride was the success it was. I would like to especially thank George and his team for their immense efforts and Tom Dunkley for his work on the posters, but there were plenty of others who all chipped in. I think we have raised the profile of the club today.

The Sunday morning weather Gods have not been overly kind to us cyclists this year, windsurfers, sailors, kite flyers and wind farm owners have done ok, but not cyclists. Therefore it was with a large amount of finger crossing that we set our club 100 miler for the same day as the RL100, which if you remember from last year was shortened due to the biblical rain. The forecast however predicted good weather with tan line enhancing sunshine and a tail wind home.

To celebrate or lament (delete as appropriate) not getting a place in the ride London sportive SNCC have decided to offer their own alternative that will be henceforth known as “Far from the madd(en)ing crowd”.

It seems to be a feature at the moment, glorious weather through the week but once Sunday is open for business a marked deterioration in conditions is almost guaranteed. A Northerly wind kept the temperatures down and also ensured that my 5 mile ride home post caffeine would be into a headwind.

Credit where credit's due. Grudgingly after lambasting the weatherman last week for constantly changing the forecast, this week they had been calling it right from about Tuesday, and they weren’t calling it pleasant. A strong westerly meant the route selected was the old faithful off to Grendon.

As current provider of the routes there’s only one rule you must adhere to, and that is “thou shall ride home in a tailwind”. Rightly or wrongly, I rely on the BBC weather forecast to determine our direction on the Sunday ride and it went like this:

I was expecting numbers to be low with a number of the usual long group suspects having competed in the 2nd race of the NCRA series at Old. It was looking even more desperate at 8:30 with just myself and Bomber lined up for the 64 miles that lay ahead of us, but with a level of tardiness that would have Joe pressing the kudos button we had strengthened to eight as we set off dead on time at 8:42AM.

Today saw the splitting of the short distance group into two separate groups, one being a slower ride whilst the other being a bit faster. I went for the bit faster although I was a bit unsure if Richard's (our chairman) shouts of 18-19mph was actually feasible.

As many of you know, we’ve had a couple of quite nasty accidents this year and we have had to call upon the help of the emergency services, including Magpas Helimedix and the East Anglian Air Ambulance. With that in mind, this year we decided we would donate the profits from our Autumn Breeze Sportive to help these charities.

Today I visited the Magpas Helimedix head quarters in Huntingdon to present a cheque for £1250, raised from the sportive. Unfortunately the crew was out on a call, but I still had an opportunity to have a look around and see what they do.